Quantum optical hard drive breakthrough: "Scientists developing a prototype optical quantum hard drive have improved storage time by a factor of over 100. The team's record storage time of six hours is a major step towards a secure worldwide data encryption network based on quantum information which could be used for banking transactions and personal emails."

New Gadget Can Turn Any HDTV Into A Desktop Computer: "It was announced this week at the 2015 International Consumer Electronics Show (CES) that Intel is ready to ship its new device that is capable of turning an ordinary HDTV into a functional desktop computer. Intel’s Compute Stick plugs right into the HDMI port on your TV, instantly turning it into a system running Windows 8.1 for only $149. The Compute Stick is due to be released in March."

Does it say whether or not it will handle gaming?

Probably not.

I'll stick with buying a RasPi.

I just have an Intel NUC hooked up to my TV running Windows 7.

Right? This thin'g a neat idea but a bit expensive compared to the pi.

Not everyone has the skills, time or patience for the Raspberry Pi. Some just want to open the box and start gaming or whatever.

Do you know how to get advice about buying noise canceling headphones?

Not sure where to get specific advice, but I personally own Bose Quiet Comfort 15 Noise-Cancellers, and they're excellent. Great sound quality, good noise cancellation, good battery life, lightweight. They're a little expensive and get a little hot in warm weather, but otherwise I'd recommend them.

I'm looking to buy a Sager brand laptop from XOTIC PC for gaming, programming, and web browsing, and I'm just wondering:

What exactly is RAID storage, and do I need it? Is a 4K screen worth it, or should I settle for 1080p now? What differentiates Kingston brand RAM from "regular" RAM? What kind of SSD drive should I get if I want to put my operating system (Windows 8.1) and maybe a few games on it? Is 128GB enough for this purpose? I'm getting a separate 1TB hard drive, by the way.

RAID is a storage method to either make data more secure or have redundancy. It might be something you need, it might not. Anyway it's not like backing up files the normal way is hard to begin with...4k screens aren't worth it still, unless of course you have the budget. The "regular" RAM is probably some other OEM. It might even be Kingston too LOL. The difference would be it wouldn't have its own thin heatsink and/or the memory chips would be slightly slower (albeit they will be rated the same; it's only relevant if you will overclock them, which is unlikely lol). Size of SSD would really depend on how large your typical games and programs would be. Of course you go to the highest SSD capacity that your budget allows.

Thanks! So here's what I'm going for:

RAID: (I have backup drives)

4K: (and it's probably going to use up more battery life anyway)

Kingston RAM: (but I'll keep thinking about it)

SSD: I'm fairly sure 256GB is good enough.

My total so far is around $1600, which is around my budget.

edited 10th Jan '15 6:34:00 PM by shooterboss

Got a new monitor today, but it doesn't look right. Box says 1920x1080 and that's what I set my resolution to, but nothing looks as crisp as on the old monitor. Any advice?

Regarding noise-cancelling headphones, I'd start at the Wirecutter. They have articles on over-ear and in-ear noise-cancelling headphones. I actually own their cheaper recommendation of the in-ear article (the $50 Sonys) and they work quite well in airplanes, which is mostly where I use them. The Wirecutter is good stuff in general.

Regarding RAID drives: there are multiple kinds, and it makes a difference. RAID 0 copies data to multiple discs in order to increase performance — you can ready from two or more discs simultaneously, so stuff loads faster. However, if any of the discs fail, you lose all the data on all the discs. RAID 1 increases reliability — it mirrors the same data to multiple discs, effectively halving your storage space, but meaning you can lose up to half of your discs (as long as only the ones with redundant data are lost) without losing any data. RAID 5 is similar to RAID 1, except instead of having exact copies of each disc, it has one disc as the "parity disc" — the upshot being that much less storage space is lost, but only one disc in the array can be lost before you lose data (though it can be any disc in the array).

Regarding 4K screen — I'd say not worth it, especially on a laptop, which isn't going to have that big a screen in the first place. If you're talking about a 29" desktop monitor, then the difference between 1080 and 4k might be noticeable, but not so much on a laptop.

RAM brands are essentially identical, so don't worry about getting specific RAM from specific companies.

128 gigs will be enough for Windows and a handful of games (depending on whether you're talking about massive games with tons of assets — like Skyrim, say — or smaller games that are less space-intensive) but not much else. If you want to put all your programs on the SSD I'd get at least 256, and even then you'll still have to watch your free space.

certain types of raid will also speed up the access rates of a drive. Basically what it does is combines multiple drives into one; one method of this results in an automatic backup and no size or speed increases, another results in a drive with twice the space and twice the speed; and a third combines the two (though needs more than two drives to work). I've got a couple SSD's set up for speed with a normal backup setup; it's rather nice.

edited 10th Jan '15 8:22:37 PM by Jaustin89*

and Thank you both. I think I'll pass on the RAID storage, but otherwise I'm shaving hundreds off my final price.

Computers using digital footprints are better judges of personality than friends and family: "Researchers have found that, based on enough Facebook Likes, computers can judge your personality traits better than your friends, family and even your partner. Using a new algorithm, researchers have calculated the average number of Likes artificial intelligence (AI) needs to draw personality inferences about you as accurately as your partner or parents."

Google to update translation app for phones: "Quentin Hardy of The New York Times said it well: The tech industry is trying 'to topple the Tower of Babel.' He said that 80 to 90 percent of the web is in just 10 languages. Google, for one, has made it known that it is working toward this goal, and will soon announce updates to its translation app for phones.

A Google Translate app will soon translate speech in real-time, according to a number of reports this week discussing Hardy's article. They say it will build on Google's Translate feature, where you can get a written translation of languages and in some cases spoken translations. In the update, said Hardy, 'the app will automatically recognize if someone is speaking a popular language and automatically turn it into written text.' Jon Fingas in Engadget said, 'Converting unfamiliar speech to text in Google Translate is currently an awkward affair: you have to start a recording and wait until a moment after you're done to find out what the other person said.' In the coming app there will be no delays. Fingas said the translation app from Google will turn speech into text on the fly."

I'm not surprised at that first fact. For some reason, people are a lot more open about expressing themselves on social networking sites than in real life.

It's not surprising at all. When I'm clicking 'Like' on something, I'm not thinking about how that will reflect on me socially. It's just a thing I do, without the kind of self-censorship I'd have in social situations, which makes for largely unskewed sociological data.

So, for some reason the bluetooth adaptor on my Windows 8.1 laptop seems to have stopped working. It happened after I restarted my laptop to install the results of Update Tuesday, but that might not be related (I normally put it on standby instead of shutting it down).

I tried going to troubleshooting and let it reinstall the driver, but that doesn't seem to have done anything.

It reads on device manager as "Intel Bluetooth 4.0 + HS adaptor", and its status on the general tab of properties says:

edited 13th Jan '15 6:20:49 PM by Bisected8

New research points way to less vulnerable computer memory: "Have you ever been working on a document on your computer and it suddenly crashes? Maybe the power goes out or there's a software glitch that causes it to freeze and you lose everything you've been working on for the past hour. New research published tomorrow in the journal Nature Communications might eventually lead to computers and other electronic devices that don't have this vulnerability.

Computers have two basic ways of storing information: RAM, which can be written and read quickly, but is volatile (meaning when the power is off, the information is lost) and disc storage, which is slow to read and write, but is non-volatile. Your computer's working memory has to be fast to process your typing or your Skype call in real time. But you pay a price in vulnerability to power loss. For more than 20 years, scientists and engineers have sought to build a new type of electronic component, called a ferroelectric field effect transistor (FeFET), with the best properties of each type of data storage: quickly accessible and non-volatile.

Physicists at The University of Texas at Austin, Oak Ridge National Laboratory and Arizona State University have taken a big step closer to building a FeFET by creating one of its three components, called a gate. The gate is the part that is either open or closed, corresponding to the 0s and 1s in a computer's binary language. Unlike a gate in the kinds of transistors currently used in RAM, this gate retains its state even when no power is applied."

Sexy. But we hear so much about these advances without any hint of delivery of viable consumer products...

We're only now finally seeing consumer penetration of OLED devices despite the technology having been invented decades ago.

edited 14th Jan '15 12:58:11 PM by Fighteer

tl;dr - instead of saying outright that people need to buy another program, TuboTax maker Intuit pretty much says screw you.

I use TaxSlayer; it's never let me down.

How do I get a URL from a google search result link without going to the actual page? I tried Copy Link Address and it gives me a different link starting with google.com.